The Patriot Post® · An Ousted NY Times Editor Tells All

Back in 2020, The New York Times published an op-ed by Arkansas Republican Senator Tom Cotton in which he called for a show of force in response to the Black Lives Matter riots that cost more than two dozen lives and did billions of dollars in damage across the country.

Cotton’s conservative viewpoint so traumatized the fragile young leftists in the Times’s newsroom that it caused a managerial mea culpa. As Ben Domenech summed it up, “The New York Times has apologized for publishing an opinion supported by 58 percent of Americans, written by a U.S. Senator.”

That wasn’t enough, though. Days later, the editor of the Gray Lady, James Bennet, submitted his resignation.

Note to future Leftmedia news editors: Never allow the Republican viewpoint to land on the page for all to see, even if you think it’s done in the spirit of good journalism.

“Notice that the Times’s statement never said what ‘standards’ were lacking in the senator’s piece,” our own Douglas Andrews wrote at the time. “But we suspect it had something to do with Cotton’s contention that the U.S. military can be lawfully and effectively deployed during times of great unrest. Or perhaps Cotton’s sin was simply in taking President Trump’s side of an argument. Either way, the Times’s speedy retreat was both unseemly and unsurprising.”

Bennet regretted his decision to allow for Cotton’s piece, claiming that the essay “fell short of our standards and should not have been published.” His groveling was too little, too late, though: A Times article announcing his departure was also critical of his tenure as editor.

The message to all the other fair-minded journalists at the Times (if there are any) is that if you dare give space to the other side, we’ll run you out of a job.

Having had a few years to reflect, Bennet has published a new piece in The Economist titled “When the New York Times Lost Its Way.” In it, he lambastes the paper’s leadership and provides insight into its fall from grace as America’s once-preeminent news source. He also offers some salient advice for ways in which American journalism can restore its original intent and purpose.

Bennet goes on to write that other Times reporters and staff members attacked his decision to publish Cotton’s piece out of concern that the public might be persuaded by Cotton’s argument for “an overwhelming show of force to disperse, detain and ultimately deter lawbreakers.”

That’s journalism in the 21st century. As for the Times’s motto, “All the News That’s Fit to Print,” what’s “fit” is nothing more than what they and the Democrat Party apparatus want you to know.

Referring to Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger, who asked for his resignation in 2020, Bennet quipped: “The Times’s problem has metastasized from liberal bias to illiberal bias, from an inclination to favor one side of the national debate to an impulse to shut debate down altogether. All the empathy and humility in the world will not mean much against the pressures of intolerance and tribalism without an invaluable quality that Sulzberger did not emphasize: courage.”

Bennet isn’t suddenly a fan of Donald Trump or Republicans, but he doesn’t mince words: “Since Adolph Ochs bought the paper in 1896, one of the most inspiring things the Times has said about itself is that it does its work ‘without fear or favor.’ That is not true of the institution today — it cannot be, not when its journalists are afraid to trust readers with a mainstream conservative argument such as Cotton’s, and its leaders are afraid to say otherwise.”

Don’t expect the Times to change anytime soon, though. We’re entering a contentious political primary season in which the collective Left will circle the wagons to keep Donald Trump off the ballot and out of the White House. For the Left and for the Times, nothing is more important than that.